


Sunburnt, Sunblind

by xyliane



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, Gen, Misgendering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12339702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xyliane/pseuds/xyliane
Summary: The problem isn’t necessarily the brightness or the heat, Killua will later realize, it’s that he never learned how to deal with the sunburn.





	Sunburnt, Sunblind

Killua first saw an eclipse when he was almost too small to recognize what it was—before his first individual kill, but after he’d learned his little sister could make cakes appear out of nowhere if he asked the right way. Illumi had taken him outside, hand long and wrapped entirely around Killua’s much smaller one. 

“You must be careful in the sun,” he’d said, fastening a pair of weirdly-shaped glasses to Killua’s face so that the world became dark and dim, little pinpricks of light left to orient himself to his surroundings.

“But I can’t see the sun,” Killua protested, head tilted upwards towards the eclipse. “The sun isn’t even there.”

Illumi hadn’t smiled, not that Killua could see, but it felt like he did, and Killua liked that. Those days, Illumi was only happy when Killua did something correctly, different from how he used to be happy simply at Killua’s happiness, but sometimes he’d be happy simply that Killua tried to do it right. “That is the point, little brother.”

* * *

When he is young, Killua learns that standing out in the sun, whether in the heat of midsummer or the clear blue skies of winter, makes his pale skin redden and peel and burn. It itches horribly, and he tries to scratch even when his parents and oldest brother smack his hands away—another form of training, he guesses, if less painful and more annoying than the others. He bears it, like he bears the electric shocks and the days with a blindfold wrapped around his eyes, and listens when he’s told never to spend so much time in the sun again.

When he is a little older, Killua learns that staring into the sun for too long causes blindness—not the fake sort that Milluki makes, or the sensory deprivation of being in a windowless room for too long, but permanent and lasting. Like the scars Father and Mother both have, like the scars Killua is slowly collecting to match. Perhaps Alluka could wish it away if Killua asked, but he doesn’t want to bother his sister about eyesight when he could be getting cake. And Killua, who is to avoid the sunlight anyways, doesn’t find it terribly difficult to avoid looking directly at the sun overhead.

It’s not as though Killua doesn’t spend time outside. Training means obstacle courses and visiting Mike at the Testing Gates and clamoring up and down Kukuroo Mountain with nothing but his hands and sneakers, learning to survive for a week on the grounds with no help from the butlers that trail him carefully and unseen. But he sticks to shadows, hides under broad leaves or at the edges of caves, staying out of sight of the warm light passing overhead. The sun isn’t something an assassin should seek out. Assassins are made for the darkness, for the places the light doesn’t touch. 

Killua’s eyes get used to shadows, but some part of his skin misses the warmth of spending a whole day outside. He chalks it up to sunburn and does his best to ignore it.

* * *

It’s only reasonable, Killua will later rationalize, that he thought of Gon as light. After so long in the dark, in shadows, his best friend was someone who burst into his life more like an ongoing explosion than a person, someone who was always there, would always be there if Killua needed to turn. Dangerous to look at for too long, dangerous to stay close to, but warm and bright and life-giving just as much as he is scalding and blinding and destructive. Who else could burn scorch marks into his retinas, into his skin, into his heart, if not a person made of sunlight? 

And Killua was burned, and blinded, and then the sun went out entirely. Because at thirteen it’s easy to forget you can’t have only one source of light, that sometimes you need to provide your own. If the sun were the only star in the sky, nights would be terribly dark and lonely.

* * *

Alluka isn’t meant to live in the darkness. Even her room, far away from the light of the sun, is brightly illuminated from the first time she’s sent there. The lamps, yellow and white by turn, glow warmly from cartoon drawings of the sun and moon, and they brighten and dim as though they’re outside. 

“But we want to be outside,” she insists, yellow crayon breaking in her tiny four-year-old fists. She glares at Killua with eyes identical to his, her hair cropped in short waves. Alluka herself is bright and glowing, and when she grants wishes the black-eyed person inside of her glimmers with the same happiness. 

At six, Killua can do a lot of things. He can make his nails turn into claws (it hurts a little), he can rip someone’s heart out (it bleeds too much), he can recite every prime minister in the world (even ones that don’t count like the man from East Gorteau). But he’d trade all of that (especially the prime minister one) for his sister’s bright smile. “What if we go now?” he asks.

“Mama won’t let me until the next wish,” she says. “I told her I’m a girl and she said to wait.”

Killua turns this over. There’s no telling when the next wish will be, and Father and Mother have been slow to offer new wishes. Killua doesn’t know why—Alluka’s always happy to grant his wish. Which gives him an idea. “What if you grant my wish, and then we can go outside?” 

His sister smiles, wide and blinding. She’s missing one of her front teeth, like a sunspot in the middle of the sun. “More cake?”

Whenever he can, Killua asks for cake. So he asks, and she gives. This time, it’s a cake in the shape of the same cartoon suns hanging around her room and scrawled all over the floor, and it tastes like honeycrisp and vanilla. He tucks his sister onto his back, her fingers still sticky with frosting and an extra piece tucked away somewhere for later, and he does his best impression of Grandpa’s best sneaking, darting around butlers and bolting through blind spots in the video cameras.

Illumi still catches them on the last flight of stairs, an immense shadow darkening the sunlight just beyond. Alluka lets out a little sniffle, and Killua scowls at his big brother. “She wanted to go outside!”

“He doesn’t get to,” Illumi says and plucks Alluka off of Killua’s back like she weighs less than the piece of cake she scrambles to recover from his hood. Crumbs tumble into Killua’s hair, little flecks of yellow against his white curls. There’s something like disappointment in his black eyes, the flat line of his mouth. He’s never pleased anymore, not even when Killua is correct and right and good. “Father wants to see you.”

“But Alluka, she’s a little girl, she just—”

“Go, Kil.”

Killua goes, following the shadow his brother casts back down the stairs and promising to himself that, even if he shouldn’t be in the sun, he’ll tear it out of the sky and burn himself to bits if he can give it to his sister.

* * *

Back when Killua had first visited Whale Island, it had seemed it was the only place in the world untouched by darkness, when Gon tugged him off the ship and loudly informed the portmaster  _this is my best friend Killua and he’s going to stay here for a month and it was his birthday recently so be nice!_  (Like no one would be nice to Gon, a twelve year old with a smile made of sunshine and promises that stuck like bubble gum in Killua’s white hair). At twelve, Whale Island was everything Killua had never thought possible, a place he could stop and breathe and be a kid, even if he was a kid lectured by a scowling Mito Freecss about the importance of sunblock and utterly ignore the lecture until his skin ached to the touch and even lying down for bed felt uncomfortable.

(“I can handle it,” Killua protested as Gon snuck, zetsu-quiet, back into the room with a bottle of aloe salve. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”

“If you don’t take care of a sunburn now, it’ll hurt more later,” Gon promised and slathered the cream everywhere the sun had touched, his own skin not burnt but browned even darker than normal. It hadn’t hurt, but Killua’s skin had blistered and peeled and ached nonetheless and Miss Mito wouldn’t let him out of the house again without a hat. He’d still burned, leaving Whale Island with little freckles spread across his shoulders that would vanish as soon as they arrive in Yorknew, but Killua wouldn’t change any second of it.)

Now, trudging up a path he’d raced through a lifetime ago (raced with someone, raced because it was someone else’s race but he couldn’t lose), Killua knows that darkness comes in different shapes and sizes. There’s no bloody-minded political assassinations here, no risk of murderous thieves or back-alley muggings. But darkness here is in the corners, like everywhere else, in the risk of natural disaster or loss of businesses as ships creep in and out of season. In heartbreaking loneliness and the listless nights, in the risk of illness from the jungle or the sea that can’t be cured without the long ride to the mainland. In children who grow up and move away and maybe never come back.

Maybe darkness isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s just life, light and dark and everywhere in between.

Mito Freecss greets him at the top of the path, smile the same as it was when Killua had been twelve. “Alluka said you were coming,” she says in a tone that wishes her boys would call once in a while.

Killua flushes a little and shifts his bag from one shoulder to the other. “She’s sorry she can’t make it this time. Her quals are next week.”

Gon’s mom nods. “That’s alright, Killua. Are you staying long?”

Afternoon sunlight warms his back, briny breeze tangling his hair where it’s not already a mess of salt and sailing. Whale Island might not be perfect, but it feels alive. “A little while,” he says.

He gets a brilliant smile, understanding what he doesn’t say, and Killua’s face warms. Mito turns, shoulders and back straight and strong with a lifetime of work that turns her brown skin freckled and her hands calloused. Like her son’s, in so many ways. “Then help me bring in the vegetables. And be sure to stack your laundry next to the right tubs this time, the line’s only half-full so we can take care of that before settling in for the night.”

Killua’s bag is in its usual place, his clothes dumped next to what must be Gon’s, before he realizes, even without his sisters, even without his best friend, this place feels like sunlight and shadow and warmth. It feels like home.

* * *

When Killua is sixteen, he discovers the cakes he’d wished for as a child all come from a trio of bakeries in a tiny village most of a week’s journey up the coast from Zaban City. Nanika, in her impossible childlike wisdom, had found bakeries that only together could afford the mysterious losses of random cakes, bakeries with as many types of cakes as there are needles on a pine tree. Alluka allows herself to be dragged to the shops, and only protests a little when Killua spends nearly every cent he’d earned on his most recent job buying all three of the shops with more money than the bakers likely see in a year. 

It’s the least he can do, after all. And the cakes are still as delicious as he remembers.

The day is impossibly sunny and the cake is just as good as he remembers it, and all the better because this time, his sisters get to share—all three of them, he insists, as they sit on a bench outside of the middle bakery with a dozen cakes between them and promises for a dozen more before they leave. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, sitting together and enjoying the day, and it will not be the last, another day of traveling out in the sun, buttercream melting on his fingers and scraped off of his sisters’ skirts.

Nanika doesn’t sunburn, not like her other self or her big brother, not even with her black eyes and flaky white skin. But her smile is warm enough to make up for that.

* * *

It’s a long time before he sees Gon again. It’s not intentional (not entirely, they just needed space and time), and it doesn’t hurt too much (he’s used to pain, after all, and a broken heart merely aches once it’s done bleeding out). The hug Gon nearly buries him with isn’t even painful, no matter how their ribs ache with how tightly they hold on (because if Gon hadn’t tackled him first, Killua would have done the same exactly thing, too-smart little sisters and public bus station be damned). 

What does hurt, worse than tearing open sutures on a messily-closed gash, is the flood of emotions that glimmers in Gon’s eyes as they separate, turning brown into glimmering floods of amber. But it’s not blinding anymore, Killua can still see clearly, or as clearly as is possible with tears blurring his own vision.

So he can see Gon reach towards him, tracing damp cheeks oh-so-gently with fingers made unfamiliar by training they didn’t do together and the months of homework Aunt Mito made him do alone, and doesn’t stop him. Instead, he leans into the touch, and Killua feels warm.  _Too_ warm, really—Gon’s hands press firmly now, and Killua’s skin aches with a too familiar warning.

“You got sunburned,” Gon says, quiet and hesitant, and pulls away. The chill as his fingers leave Killua’s cheeks is almost a relief.

Killua shrugs. “I’m used to it.”

Gon shakes his head and shrugs his bag to the ground, rummaging through the brown and green canvas to find something. “Killua, if you don’t take care of it now—”

“It’ll hurt more later.” Killua crouches down, grabbing his best friend’s hand to press it back against his sunburnt cheeks. It still hurts, and it’s still too warm, and Gon looks at him with wide eyes and breath caught in his throat. “It’s just a sunburn. I’ll be okay in a few days.”

For a long moment, Gon doesn’t move, gaze locked on Killua’s and fingers firm against the redness across Killua’s cheeks. But then he relaxes, thumb flicking from the burn down to the pale skin across Killua’s chin that only became a little pink. His smile is brighter than stars, but it doesn’t burn in a flashfire anymore, turning everything in its path into ash and coal. It’s just…warm. Warm and bright and steady like the sun on a cloudless day and more than ever before, Killua wants to bask in it.

“You’re okay now,” Gon says. And when Killua can’t help but smile back, Gon’s smile blossoms like a sunflower following the sun.

* * *

Gon doesn’t come back to Whale Island, not this time. He’d left Killua a message a few weeks back, the sort of message he always leaves before vanishing—on a hunt, on a training trip, on a search for the perfect flower to match Aunt Mito’s garden. When Killua vanishes, he does the same. That’s the deal: they tell each other, at least a little bit, what they want to do even if they don’t say where they’re going or for how long. Those questions aren’t what they’re interested in, anyways.

 _Did you get what you wanted?_  they ask each other. And if the answer is anything other than yes, then it had better be a damn good story.

Killua wanders off to the cliffs, the ones he’d first realized as much as he didn’t want to be his family, he didn’t know what else he could want. At night, the stars will stretch impossibly bright, impossibly far, full of impossible dreams Killua’s not sure he or Gon ever really fulfilled as well as they wanted to. But during the day, it’s just a grassy cliffside, old firepit long unused and ocean a distant echo of waves.

Gon’s not there, but Killua feels him in every sea-cracked stone, in the blades of grass under his feet, in a breeze that smells of salt and sounds like someone calling his name. He doesn’t need to smile for Killua to feel sunlight warm and familiar on his face, to feel life growing all around him.

But before Gon, Killua hadn’t much considered what it would be like to stand in the sun until his cheeks ache and his nose is red, for no other reason than to bask in the warmth. 

It hurts, but that’s okay. Getting what he wants means being sunburnt a little now and again.

**Author's Note:**

> wear your sunscreen, folks, don't be like killua.
> 
> come visit me on [tumblr!](https://xyliane.tumblr.com/)


End file.
